a letter to a girl past the rainbow bridge, who fought her great war.

a prose poem

Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

for g, beloved of a beloved, after one year.

Dear you, my sister in arms, while you still carried them in this tenuous sphere, I wish you the greatest peace. I know what it means to be weighed down by the holographic voices, to seek the mystic serenity of the longest sleep. I pray that you stand under a beautiful sky, wherever you are.

I hope there is no war in that sacred city, no guilt or remorse or pain or angst. You have held those monsters on your shoulder blades for far too long. Time has a way of dilating, where even a second can feel like an eternity; relative frames demand a reconsideration of time’s skin and bearing.

I know the weight of those concrete shoes, and what it means to untie them. You were here for as long as your feet could keep you up, even if that eternity was a butterfly’s breath by some other angle. You deserve to breathe at your own pace, without Atlas’s burden held against you. I hope you have found that grace.

I, too, bear that weight. Someday, I will seek the same footpath that you found, depositing my bones on this weary road and seeking some far-off light. I have tried to slip my skin before, and will again, unless some happenstance claims me first, or else some trick of…